More than 450 former federal prosecutors who worked in Republican and Democratic administrations have signed on to a statement asserting special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s findings would have produced obstruction charges against President Trump — if not for the office he held.

The statement — signed by myriad former career government employees as well as high-profile political appointees — offers a rebuttal to Attorney General William P. Barr’s determination that the evidence Mueller uncovered was “not sufficient” to establish that Trump committed a crime.

Mueller had declined to say one way or the other whether Trump should have been charged, citing a Justice Department legal opinion that sitting presidents cannot be indicted, as well as concerns about the fairness of accusing someone for whom there can be no court proceeding.

“Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice,” the former federal prosecutors wrote.

“We emphasize that these are not matters of close professional judgment,” they added. “Of course, there are potential defenses or arguments that could be raised in response to an indictment of the nature we describe here. . . . But, to look at these facts and say that a prosecutor could not probably sustain a conviction for obstruction of justice — the standard set out in Principles of Federal Prosecution — runs counter to logic and our experience.”

How Barr appeared to misrepresent Mueller’s findings

Attorney General William P. Barr repeatedly appeared to misrepresent or misstate special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s findings on May 1.(Video: JM Rieger/Photo: Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

The statement is notable for the number of people who signed it — 375 as of early Monday afternoon, growing to 459 in the hours after it published — and the positions and political affiliations of some on the list. It was posted online Monday afternoon; those signing it did not explicitly address what, if anything, they hope might happen next.

Among the high-profile signers are Bill Weld, a former U.S. attorney and Justice Department official in the Reagan administration who is running against Trump as a Republican; Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general in the George H.W. Bush Administration; John S. Martin, a former U.S. attorney and federal judge appointed to his posts by two Republican presidents; Paul Rosenzweig, who served as senior counsel to independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr; and Jeffrey Harris, who worked as the principal assistant to Rudolph W. Giuliani when he was at the Justice Department in the Reagan administration.

The list also includes more than 20 former U.S. attorneys and more than 100 people with at least 20 years of service at the Justice Department — most of them former career officials. The signers worked in every presidential administration since that of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a federal prosecutor before he became a lawmaker, joined the letter after news of it broke, and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, tweeted his support for its premise .

The signatures were collected by the nonprofit group Protect Democracy, which counts Justice Department alumni among its staff and was contacted about the statement last week by a group of former federal prosecutors, said Justin Vail, an attorney at Protect Democracy.

“We strongly believe that Americans deserve to hear from the men and women who spent their careers weighing evidence and making decisions about whether it was sufficient to justify prosecution, so we agreed to send out a call for signatories,” Vail said. “The response was overwhelming. This effort reflects the voices of former prosecutors who have served at DOJ and signed the statement.”

What’s in the Mueller report?

A redacted version of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report was released to the public on April 18. Here’s what’s in it.(Brian Monroe, Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)

Weld said by the time he reviewed the statement, it already had more than 100 signatures, and he affixed his name because he had concluded the evidence “goes well beyond what is required to support criminal charges of obstruction of justice.”

“I hope the letter will be persuasive evidence that Attorney General Barr’s apparent legal theory is incorrect,” he said.

A spokesman for the special counsel’s office declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department referred a reporter to Barr’s previous public statements on the subject.

Many legal analysts have wondered since Mueller’s report was released whether the special counsel believed he had sufficient evidence to charge Trump and was just unwilling to say it out loud.

By the report’s account, Trump — after learning he was being investigated for obstruction — told his White House counsel to have Mueller removed. And when that did not work, according to Mueller’s report, Trump tried to have a message passed to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to limit the scope of Mueller’s authority. Of that episode, Mueller’s team wrote there was “substantial evidence” to indicate Trump was trying to “prevent further investigative scrutiny” of himself and his campaign.

“All of this conduct — trying to control and impede the investigation against the President by leveraging his authority over others — is similar to conduct we have seen charged against other public officials and people in powerful positions,” the former federal prosecutors wrote in their letter.

They wrote that prosecuting such cases was “critical because unchecked obstruction — which allows intentional interference with criminal investigations to go unpunished — puts our whole system of justice at risk.”

Mueller’s team, though, wrote that it decided not to make a “traditional prosecutorial judgment” in part because of the Justice Department opinion on not indicting sitting presidents and because the evidence obtained “presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved” if they were to do so.

“At the same time, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state,” Mueller’s team wrote.

“The government has to prove things beyond a reasonable doubt,” Barr said. “And, as the report shows, there’s ample evidence on the other side of the ledger that would prevent the government from establishing that.”

I do not usually reblog items from the Washington Post, but this article is so important, I felt it deserved the bigger airing. I am a subscriber and I find it frustrating that I can’t make some of these posts available, but usually, I assume someone else will post the same material. I’m sure someone else will post the material, but nobody writes it better or with more clarity than the Post.

This is a completely non-profit blog (I wish it were a little less non-profit) so this is truly public service!

I’m sending this to everyone because I think maybe I stayed with WordPress long enough to get them to start fixing the problems that have been bugging everyone.

Please forgive the spacing issues. It another one of WordPress’s never repaired problems. Some days, it’s worse than others.

This was the final note:

Steve D. (Automattic)

May 6, 19:30 UTC

Hey there!

We had a live chat recently where you noticed the settings within the Reader appeared to broken. After some investigating and a discussion with developers, it seems there are quite a few things that need to be fixed. I’ve opened up an issue with them to have this fixed. We’ll reply here once we have more information.

Thanks again for your patience and understanding, and for bringing this to our attention. Let us know if you have any other questions in the meanwhile!

Best,

Steve D.Happiness Engineer

After Trent could not make a comment, though I did find both his comments in “spam” — usually I don’t find them at all — I went into my followers/manage/setting file to reset his link to me only to discover that the setting didn’t work. At all.

Click?

Nothing happened. I checked up and down the 75 blogs I follow (which is why I never seem to have time to actually keep up with everyone!) and all of the “settings” links were dead.

That was one bug over the line for me. These connection issues — the pingbacks that don’t ping or back, the comments that don’t work, the now you are connected, now you aren’t bug, not to mention the disappearing post notification issue and the “What happened to my followers?” problem … and I think and have said this before that ALL OF THESE PROBLEMS ARE CONNECTED.

They are not separate issues to be dealt with one at a time, but no one was listening.

Steve wasn’t listening either until he realized HIS settings weren’t working either. Suddenly, it was a bug. When he went to the developers, they said “Ooh, there are a LOT of bugs!” which of course is what we have all be saying for weeks, maybe months.

We have connection issues and I think it all goes back to the database which for at least two years has not been working as it should. The entire Reader is a mess of bugs.

What they have done is keep pushing forward without ever fixing the bugs they’ve left behind and they have accumulated and now, the problem is finally big enough for them to actually try and fix it.

You are welcome to send me congratulations. Cash would also help.

I just stayed on the line literally since I got up this morning. I refused to give up. Because no settings is not a little bug. It’s a really big one and you can’t work around it.

They were supposed to send me a transcript of the “chat” but for some reason, didn’t. All I can tell you for sure is that I really did my best and I hope something comes out of it. Because it is getting harder and harder to use this platform and sooner or later, any number of us will just give up.

I copied most of the relevant sections from the actual chat:

What’s a specific example of a setting on https://wordpress.com/following/manage that you’re unable to change? I want to see if I see the same problem on my end, but want to make sure I do exactly what you’re doing.

ALL of them. NONE of them are working. Up and down the page, the grey settings function is not working.

Ah, the button I’ve highlighted in this screenshot, yes? https:/1/cld.wthms.co/a3im2A

I can click on the green “Following” and IT works, but not the settings underneath.

Gotcha! okay. I can see not only the issue on your end but I notice on my own Reader, the settings button doesn’t do anything as well. Give me just a moment to do some more digging.

Ah, so it isn’t just me. That helps. If it’s more general, you can track it down (I hope).

Not just you! Definitely makes it something we can troubleshoot easier. Let me get a hold of a developer to take a look with us. Give me just a few minutes.

No problem. I live on this computer. At least we know there’s an actual
problem

Yup! Thanks for bringing it to our attention 🙂

I suppose you’ll get back to me? Hopefully, it will turn out that all of these weird connection issues are somehow linked. That would be fine. Not being able to adjust settings is a big deal, so sooner would be way better than later. At least we found the bug. No small thing, that. I’ve done a LOT of beta testing over the years. It went with writing manuals and other documentation. You could use more beta testers. Just saying. We can save developers a lot of time by finding bugs BEFORE users!

You’re definitely right 🙂 I just heard from the dev team who said they noticed some other odd things with the reader as well. I’m going to file this bug report for them now and I’ll contact you via email, where we can notify you once we have an update and a fix.

Thank you! I work at home, but I work.

Hey, me too 🙂

Ah, the Internet. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it.

The truth!

I shall await you. Meanwhile, I will tell all and sundry that finally, this is getting tracked down. It will make people REALLY happy!

😀

Closing down and thank you. I don’t have your name … what is it?

Steve!

Gotcha!

Have a good day! I’m going to send a follow-up email to make contact now, and we’ll reply in that thread once we know more. Thanks again for your patience and understanding!

Hey, if this gets fixed. that’s huge. Can I save this chat? I don’t see a link for that.

Yup! Once the chat is over, you’ll receive an entire transcript via email. You can also open a new one and the entire history should be here as well.

Great. Have a wonderful day!

You too!

The transcript didn’t show up. I copied this from the actual “chat” file and it’s not the whole thing, but I think it’s the most relevant pieces.

The squirrels and I are quarreling. I am a believer that the hungry should be allowed to eat and I quite like our squirrels. I can actually recognize them, usually by the size and coloration of their tails.

The problem is, there seem to be a great many of them and we seem to be the only open buffet in the region … or maybe we just serve a better quality of seeds.

Every morning, when I first get up I open the shades and look at the feeders. There are always two squirrels wrapped around the hanging feeder and nestled happily inside the flat feeder. I leave them be. They are free to chow down until I get up for the day … about 4 or 5 hours later.

A crowd of cowbirdsMore Cowbirds!Very handsome Cowbird!

But that’s it. After 11 in the morning, when I’m having my coffee, I open my back door and tell them it’s time to get off the feeder and find food in the forest. They don’t even move. Apparently, I am no longer a threatening presence. Finally, after I talk to them for a while and they refuse to move, I open the door and walk towards the feeders and then they slowly detach and climb down the railing to the deck.

Goldfinch in the rainRain does not bother himThere were other Goldfinches on the other side of the feeder too

I can see them lurking just below the fence, so I go out again, look them in the eye and say: “I SEE you. You’ve had your time in the feeders. Now you have to let the birds eat too.”

I go back to the house and they are back on the feeders. I repeat the performance, only this time, I stand on the deck. Each time they peak over the edge of the deck I tell them: “I said it was time to go. Now, beat it buster.”

Sharing the feeder – Lady Cardinal and Downy Woodpecker

Each time one of them leaves, a dozen birds hit the feeder because they’ve been waiting in the trees. They aren’t afraid of me anymore. They seem to know I’m talking to the squirrels.

Red-bellied Woodpecker

How they know this, I have no idea, but they don’t skedaddle. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to go and physically remove the squirrels one of these mornings. I really don’t mind them eating, but they can’t eat all the food I put out and that’s what they are doing. I can’t afford twenty pounds of seeds a week.

Carolina Wren

It’s like when you go for breakfast with a friend and you get to chatting. No one minds because it’s early, but as lunchtime rolls around, the waiters start giving you the eye. There are no more refills for your coffee.

He’s back!

I don’t think my squirrels have been eating out recently. They don’t have good restaurant manners.

I hate printers. I also hate copiers, scanners, and fax machines. The only other things I hate are telephones. To be fair, I hate all telephones, not just cellular or mobile ones. I don’t understand them and they don’t understand me.

Just saying.

These days, when you buy a printer, you are also buying a scanner, copier, and it probably is wireless and can run on Bluetooth. I get an entire package of things I hate.

I still hate all of them, whether in one package or many. I got my new printer a while ago and finally got around to installing it yesterday. Maybe I should have waited.

When you are setting up a new printer, what can you do if your WiFi simply won’t “see” it?

It turns out, the most popular technique is highly technical denial. This means you turn everything off and go shopping. Really, any outside-the-house activity will do the job.

We went grocery shopping.

When we came back from shopping, I realized I had to confront the printer again. Another one of the small aggravations of modern times: new computers — like this one — don’t have DVD players. I bought an external one, but first I tried downloading the setup instructions from the website. This is supposed to work just like the disc, but unsurprisingly, did not.

Probably, because the WiFi did not find the printer. Or maybe there was some other inexplicable reason.

When your WiFi won’t find a device, there isn’t much you can do about it. You can wave your hands in the air like a fan. Maybe that will blow the WiFi in the right direction. You can shake your devices — but this may turn out to be a disadvantage because it might break. Then you’ll have to return it and start all over again.

Then, there’s cursing. For many people, that works well, but for me, it’s another distraction.

Turning everything off, then turning every back on is one of the most popular and effective ways of convincing something that isn’t working to work, but this time, it didn’t. I should have known. If going shopping didn’t fix it, I needed a new approach.

It’s so simple …

So, after we came home and I realized it hadn’t magically fixed itself (damn), I hauled my laptop and DVD player into the office. There are — as it turns out — alternate instructions which only appear when you click “NO, that didn’t work either” for the third time. At which point alternate instructions pop into your browser.

These are apparently dangerous weapons of mass destruction and can only be used if your WiFi absolutely can not find the printer, even after you wave your arms and whisper the name of the manufacturer while burning incense.

It turns out, you have to press the WiFi button until the ALERT button flashes twice. Not three times. If it flashes three times, you have to start over.

Next, you have to push the start button again, at which time the WiFi button should start to flash very quickly. Not slowly. Slow flashing won’t work. They also don’t warn you there’s a pause before it starts rapidly flashing — but if you push it again, you have to start from the top.

If all goes well, at this point, unless your WiFi is actually out, you should have a connection.

Then you push another button while pressing the third button. Which prints a sheet which you will attempt to scan. Which inevitably produces an error message. If you try to do it again, all it will do is keep printing the same page.

I said screw it and gave up. Then, I decided to register the printer. It turns out, I can’t. Because I am a Canon user — but have no idea what my password used to be. I’m exhausted from carrying the laptop around and having to follow all those instructions.

Since the printer has been found by the WiFi, it would surely print if asked. If the WiFi had found the printer all by itself like it should have, I wouldn’t have had to do any of this. Windows would have taken over and installed everything. Immediately.

Good news? The printer says it works. I’m trusting this is true because I’m not sure about the scanner. I’ll save that for some other day. Like maybe never would be the right day.

Have I mentioned how much I really hate printers? I used to hate fax machines and copy machines too, but now they’re all one thing. So I have just one thing to hate instead of three.

Growing up, we had some beautiful sets of China that we actually used to eat on. My mother also displayed pieces of her china sets whenever possible. So I love dishware and always try to buy interesting and beautiful pieces for meals, but also to use as part of the decor. It is an inexpensive way to add interesting chatchkas to your home – and my home is full of chatchkas, often arranged into decorative vignettes.

Here are some of the dishes I’ve used in my kitchen, eating area and sun porch, on shelves, on tables, and on the walls.

This cabinet is mostly decorative and I rarely use those items.This cabinet is totally functional and houses my everyday dishes and cups.

Decorative cup and salt shaker

Two decorative plates in my kitchen bookcase

Another decorative plate flanked by salt and pepper shakers

I also use plates as wall decor.

One narrow wall flanking a window from the porch to the kitchen

The other side of the window into the kitchen/porch

The same fish plates used on top of the cabinets above the stove area in the kitchen

Plate on small wall in eating aarea

Matching plate on the opposite small wall in eating area

I still have many of my mother’s and my old china sets that are too country or too formal for my homey but modern house today. They also don’t fit in with my mostly aqua and turquoise color scheme. But I still love them and want to share them with you.

Formal dessert set I got for my first wedding in 1974The charming and less formal set I bought for my first home in New York City in 1974 (from Italy)

Magnificent but whimsical floral plate of my mother’s

Another of my mother’s beautiful china sets

One of my favorite dessert sets ever!

Tiny plates my mom used for decoration in a hutch

My favorite of all my mother’s china sets which we used in our summer, country style house in CT

Ever since the Mueller report came out, sort of, the topic on most people’s mind (or at least all the pundits on cable news) is whether or not to start impeachment hearings against the Twittler-in-chief.

In the last few weeks, with the addition of Attorney General William (I’m Trump’s Roy Cohn) Barr it has become clear that this administration has thrown any and all respect for the constitution out the window.

Then they went outside, peed on it, shit on it, let it dry out and peed and shit on it again. They are refusing all subpoenas issued by Congress. They are not allowing anyone to testify in front of any Congressional Committee. Even though many of those people don’t even work for the government anymore. The AG has lied to Congress and then refused to show up for a House Committee hearing because he didn’t want to be questioned by an actual lawyer!

The administration has said to Congress “FUCK YOU!” We don’t care if we’re breaking the law. What are you going to do about it?

Here’s the thing. No administration has ever done this before. Yet another “political norm” bites the dust.

What has become abundantly clear in the last two years is that our government has lasted for over 200 years because the people in it had some sense of civility. Some sense of decency. Some sense of shame. We never realized how much of government relied on everybody “doing the right thing.” We all just did it. It wasn’t written “black letter law.”

Then along came Cheesy McCheese Head.

A man with no civility. No sense of decency. No sense of shame. No regard for “Political Norms.” And as far as anyone can tell, no conscience.

If it isn’t written down as being illegal, fuck you, he’ll do it. And his and the whole Republican Party’s attitude is “even if it is written down, even if it is against the law, fuck you, we don’t care. What are you going to do about it?”

Here’s the most depressing thing. It turns out that Congress may not have much they can do about it. They can issue a subpoena, which in our previous reality was a really big deal. But this administration has just said “Fuck you, we don’t care. What are you going to do about it?”

Turns out they can hold a person who ignores a subpoena with a Contempt of Congress citation. Oh, that’s bad, right? What happens then? Congress sends the contempt citation to the Department of Justice, who then brings the cited individual up on criminal charges.

What if the person under the contempt citation is the HEAD OF THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT? What does he do?

Nothing. He ignores it. Fuck you. What are you going to do about it?

Congress requests the President’s tax returns be made available under an ironclad lawwritten in the 1920s after the Tea Pot Dome scandals. They were intended to make sure no President or administration can hide corruption.

It was written to leave no wiggle room for a President or member of his cabinet to weasel out of providing those returns. So what does the Secretary of the Treasury, a person who has no right to interfere, do?

You guessed it. He says “Fuck you, I’m not going to allow that to happen. What are you going to do about it?

Theoretically, Congress can take all these issues to court, where they are on solid ground and will probably win. They always have in the past. What the current Supreme Court would do is questionable.

All the lower courts are going to say is, “Are you fucking kidding me? This is illegal as hell. Honor the subpoenas and turn over his friggin’ tax returns.”

Okay, they probably wouldn’t say friggin’. I’m just making a point. I like to speak in the vernacular. Okay, that’s not true either. I just wanted to use vernacular in that sentence.

The problem is, all of that would take a lot of time and we need speed. There is a good chance even if Congress wins, the administration will still say, “Fuck you. We’re not going to do it. What are you going to do about it?”

What can Congress do at this point? They have a thing called “Inherent Contempt” which allows them to actually jail someone they hold in contempt and fine them.

But their “jail” is merely a room in Congress’s basement. The Sargent-at-Arms of the House of Representatives doesn’t have a large force of well-armed troops.

That option is iffy.

You want me to do what? Are you kidding me? All I’ve got is this old sword! WTF!

So the only thing left that Congress can do is Impeach the mother-fucker. Not my quote, but a quote from a member of the House, the Speaker of the House, and many top Democrats are resisting this.

Their reason? They know the Senate will never convict, so why bother?

Because they have to do something. They simply cannot allow all of this to happen and do absolutely nothing, even if the end result isn’t an actual conviction.

Their reasoning is badly flawed but I understand why they think this way. When the Republicans impeached Clinton the majority of the country didn’t want them to do it. They did it anyway. On their own. On a party-line vote.

The result? The House Republicans impeached. The Senate didn’t convict. They knew the Senate wouldn’t convict when they impeached him. They did it anyway.

When it was all over? Clinton’s approval ratings were in the ’70s.

So what? The Republicans won the next election. Granted the won because the Supreme Court appointed Bush as President, but nonetheless, they ultimately won.

Why were Clinton’s approval ratings so high? Because the MAJORITY of Americans thought getting impeached because you lied about getting a BJ from a consenting adult was bad, but NOT AN IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE!

The group MoveOn.orgwas created because most Americans wanted to “Move On” from this silly impeachment bullshit. Back then, I was working for CBS News Up To The Minute news.

Every night, we would air a three-minute piece about how the latest polls showed most Americans didn’t give a crap about Clinton’s affairs. No one wanted more stories about Monica Lewinsky.

The very next piece was inevitably about Monica Lewinsky.

After months of this, one night I asked the line producer if he actually watched the news block he just produced. He replied, “What do you mean?”

I replied, “You just aired the umpteenth poll showing how nobody cares about Monica Lewinsky and the Clinton scandal and your next piece is about Monica Lewinsky.”

His reply? “What’s your point?”

To this day, after 40 years of working in Network News, I still don’t exactly know what a news producer does. Now that I’m retired, I’m not sure I care.

The difference between then and now is simple. Back then, the majority of the country thought to impeach Clinton was silly. He got a blow job.

Thispresident is under 14 CRIMINAL investigations — not counting the Mueller report — which documents at least 10 instances of provable obstruction of justice.

Now he is obstructing Congress daily — in plain sight! The overwhelming victory for the Democrats in 2018 was due to the majority of Americans wanting thisPresident to be reined in.

To be impeached. Speedily. Then sent forth to a place of imprisonment, clapped in irons at least until his political string runs out forever and we know he can’t come back.

It looks bleak. The checks and balances of this country and our Constitution contained some serious hidden flaws. Mainly, the Founding Fathers assumed — and we all know what assumedmeans — that the members of Congress would do their jobs.

Which is checking and balancing and keeping the country on an even keel.

The Republicans are notdoing that. The current administration isn’t following the Constitution. Essentially, they are spitting on it with the result that our system is falling apart.

The reason we are not impeaching is that the House of Representatives know they can’t get a conviction in the Senate. This is totally stupid.

Only two and a half Presidents have been impeached. Nixon only counts as a half because he was never impeached. Congress was going to impeach him, but he quit before they could do it. In the other two cases, Clinton and Lincoln’s Vice President Andrew Johnson were impeached, but neither was convicted, although Johnson came close.

He won by only one vote. And that guy had to be brought into the Senate on a stretcher. He was near death. Nobody’s ever been convicted by the Senate. So that’s not an excuse to not impeach.

Who’s Otter? I’m talking about Otter, the character from the movie Animal House played by Tim Matheson.

Specifically, the scene where Dean Wormer has closed down Delta House and the whole fraternity was getting thrown out of their frat house. Otter comes into their living room after just having the crap beaten out of him by the bad guy Frat house Omega Theta Pi.

And here Otter gives the speech that drives the rest of the movie. And this speech should drive all of us now.

“Now we could do it with conventional weapons, but that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part!”

And there you have it. It appears to be a futile gesture and thus stupid. But this situation absolutely requires a stupid gesture to be done on somebody’s part. We’re the only ones who can do it.

It will most likely fail, but we have to try. Hell, it can be the Democrats campaign slogan. “We Tried to Impeach the Mother Fucker. What Do You Want From Us?”

To participate in the Ragtag Daily Prompt, create a Pingback to your post, or copy and paste the link to your post into the comments. And while you’re there, why not check out some of the other posts too!